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How to find Frida in Mexico City

Pilgrimage takes travellers into heart of tortured artist's world

People look at the 1939 painting 'Las Dos Fridas' (The Two Fridas), by Mexican artist Frida Kahlo which is held by the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City.

Photograph by: Alejandro
, Acosta

A dozen people have gathered in the tiny room to view the wooden four-poster that is the most famous bed in all of Mexico. More are waiting their turn in the adjacent hallway.

The bed has a canopy made of wood, with a large mirror attached to the underside, allowing anyone lying on the bed to stare at their reflection. It was the bed of Frida Kahlo.

There is also a head of sorts on the bed looking into the mirror. It's Kahlo's death mask, placed in the middle of the bed, rather than on the pillow. A green shawl is carefully arranged around the mask, as if to give this disembodied head a torso and shoulders. Poor Frida: She has been condemned to stare at herself, and nothing else, for eternity.

The bed is one of the star attractions at the first stop of a do-it-yourself, daylong Frida Kahlo tour in Mexico City. It stands inside La Casa Azul, otherwise known as the Museo Frida Kahlo.

This is the home where Kahlo was born in 1907 and died in 1954, a week after her 47th birthday. The exterior of the house is painted a shocking cobalt blue in the sleepy, upscale district of Mexico City called Coyacan.

It was actually Kahlo's mother who arranged for the mirror to be placed on the bed. Kahlo was often bedridden and the mirror allowed her to paint self-portraits, the artworks for which she is best known.

Two things combined to destroy Kahlo's health. First there was polio, which shrivelled her right leg. Then, at 18, she was involved in a horrific collision between a bus and a trolley car. The accident broke several bones, including her spinal column. An iron handrail was driven into her abdomen and uterus, causing her endless problems and numerous operations later in life.

But La Casa Azul is but one of three major sites for Kahlo pilgrimages in sprawling Mexico City. The other two are Museo Casa Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo in San Angel and Museo Dolores Olmedo in Xochimilco. The three sites are far apart and none is close to a subway stop. Trying to take different taxis from one site to another could be complicated, if not downright dangerous, since some of the taxis prowling the streets are looking for tourists to fleece.

The solution is to hire a car and driver for the day. Most hotel front desks can line you up with a safe driver who will offer a reasonable hourly or daily rate and most likely speak some English.

For my recent Frida Kahlo tour, I booked a driver named Rogelio, who was recommended at the centrally located Hotel Fleming, which I have been patronizing for a decade. We negotiated a rate of 900 pesos (about $70), which would allow me to visit my three chosen sites, plus some other museums, if they could all be accommodated in seven hours.

At precisely 11 a.m., as prearranged, Rogelio arrived in front of the Fleming. In 20 minutes we were at the Casa Azul. I entered and Rogelio went in search of a late breakfast that he described to me later in lip-smacking detail: Orange juice, fresh papaya, two eggs and chilaquiles - fried corn tortillas topped with salsa and cheese.

The entrance fee to the Casa Azul is 65 pesos (about $5) plus another 60 pesos (about $4.50) to take flashless photographs.

The first few rooms offer dozens of drawings and paintings by Kahlo. They're not her best nor her most famous works, but visitors get a good idea of the kind of work Kahlo did as a teenager and later as she moved toward surrealism. Another room is filled with Kahlo family photographs and yet another with paintings by Diego Rivera, Frida's on-again, off-again husband.

Fridamania more about Frida than her art

Mexicans do love catering to foreigners' Fridamania. Reproductions of her paintings are sold on almost every street corner frequented by tourists.

Some Mexican art historians do not think much of Kahlo's work and see her celebrity as the creation of American and European feminists seeking an icon. What is certain is that the greatest creation by Frida Kahlo was Frida Kahlo, a walking work of art in brilliantly coloured peasant costumes and clunky jewelry, who flirted with communism, had an affair with Leon Trotsky (plus some women), was briefly the toast of Paris and became the most interesting Mexican of the 20th century. Her paintings, collected by such celebrities as Madonna, may just be the icing on the cake.

La Casa Azul exhibits various personal articles of Kahlo's, including her wheelchair, medically necessary corsets, clothing and kitchen utensils, along with a recipe for mole poblano (chicken in a spicy, unsweetened chocolate sauce). Most rooms face a tree-shaded courtyard that the busloads of foreign tourists and Mexican children can make very crowded.

As we left Casa Azul, my driver decided we had enough time to make an unscheduled stop at Anahuacalli, a museum that looks like a pre-Hispanic pyramid, is built of volcanic rock and is filled with ancient indigenous art collected by Rivera. Quite spectacular.

Your ticket from the Casa Azul, just a few kilometres away, allows you free entry. Otherwise it is 20 pesos ($1.50).

Next, Rogelio took me to Museo Dolores Olmedo. This is a palace on acres of manicured gardens, complete with peacocks and xoloitzcuintle hairless dogs that were plentiful during pre-Hispanic times but now are almost extinct.

Dolores Olmedo was Rivera's greatest patron and, some say, the artist's lover. Olmedo ended up with the single greatest collection of Kahlo's art - more than a dozen major paintings, including these on view that day: Self-Portrait with Monkey, 1945, The Broken Column, 1944, and A Few Small Nips, 1935.

A tour of Kahlo's home

By the time Rogelio and I left the museum, traffic was crawling. Finally, after about an hour, we arrived at Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo, two box-shaped houses joined by a rooftop catwalk. The larger, coral-coloured house is Rivera's. The smaller, blue one is Kahlo's.

The star attraction is Kahlo's tiny bathroom. Kahlo used to lie in her bathtub for hours, dreaming up surreal paintings. Now, this is where her disciples gather reverently, staring at the tub.

In Rivera's house, his second-floor studio has been kept largely intact. His painting materials and other bric-a-brac are there. The room is dominated by several "judas" figures, three metres or more tall, that Rivera collected. These are demonic figures made of papier-mâche, cardboard and cloth and filled with firecrackers that are exploded on the Saturday before Easter Sunday.

The next day, I decided to take a break from Kahlo and visit the new, Holocaust-dominated Museum of Memory and Tolerance. In the gift shop, among the books about the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela and other human rights icons were little packets of Frida Kahlo sticky notes.

I had to buy them. They were overpriced at 120 pesos ($9) and made in China, but will serve as a fitting souvenir of my Frida Kahlo tour.

If you go

Where to stay: A charming centrally located hotel with colonial touches, a good restaurant and excellent drivers is the Hotel Maria Cristina, 31 Rio Lerma. Standard double rooms cost about $60. See hotelmariacristina.com

Museums: Most museums in Mexico are open Tuesday to Sunday (so don't plan a Frida Kahlo tour on a Monday).

More: For more on the three sites, see: museofridakahlo.org.mx; estudiodiegorivera.bellasartes.gob.mx; museodoloresolmedo.org.mx

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